Peggy Nkonyeni, the MEC for health in KwaZulu-Natal openly encourages the practice of charlatans and con artists touting bogus cures and hocus-pocus potions for treating Aids, while attacking dedicated HIV doctors. This in a province which has the country’s worst HIV infection rate. How is it possible that she could be so confused? Surely even she knows that it’s the other way round? Support the doctors. Run the frauds out of town. Well, apparently not. She is the MEC for death. Not health. She is the Bride of Frankenmanto. Where she goes, there too goes the Grim Reaper. Patients die in her wake. And why? Because she’s a crackpot. Ditch her. It’s the healthy option.
Kwazulu-Natal Health MEC Peggy Nkonyeni wants to experiment with traditional medicine for Aids patients at a Durban hospice. She is being assisted by traditional healers who are opposed to antiretroviral medication.
Nkonyeni asked the management of the Pinetown-based Dream Centre whether it would be prepared to integrate traditional medicine at the hospice. The hospice, which is almost entirely dependent on a government subsidy, agreed to explore the possibility.
However, Dream Centre public relations manager Neil McDonald admitted that a number of patients who had recovered sufficiently to be discharged returned to the hospice some weeks later in a “bad way” after taking traditional medicine, particularly uBhejane.
The push towards traditional medicine with sick patients triggered disquiet among some of the staff. They said privately that they would consider resigning if traditional medicine were integrated, as their patients were usually not in a position to make an informed choice. But others, particularly senior nurses, were said to support the initiative.
On August 15, Nkonyeni personally introduced the controversial head of the Traditional Healers Organisation, Nhlavana Maseko, to Dream Centre management. Maseko, a critic of antiretroviral medication, had an alliance with vitamin seller Dr Matthias Rath, aimed at “undermining the pharmaceutical business” of antiretrovirals.
A few days after her visit, Nkonyeni established a task team to work with the Dream Centre staff to develop a protocol for the “integration of traditional and western medicine”.
But western antiretroviral drugs are the only treatment yet proven scientifically to control HIV/Aids and restore health to very ill patients.
University of KwaZulu-Natal Professor Nceba Gqaleni chairs the task team, which includes Zeblon Gwala, who sells the potion uBhejane, which he claims can cure Aids. Gqaleni is involved in testing whether uBhejane has any effect on people with HIV and has signed a confidentiality agreement with Gwala.
Gwala, whose office is a short walk from Dream Centre, is adamant that uBhejane cannot be taken with antiretroviral medication. Gwala’s own daughter, his first uBhejane patient, died at the Dream Centre some years ago, according to Dream Centre general manager Neville de Witt.
Treatment Action Campaign national spokesman Lesley Odendal said: “Traditional healers have a role in combating HIV but we are concerned that a quack like Gwala, who is not a traditional healer and who has caused a lot of harm with uBhejane, is included.”
The Dream Centre task team, made up of centre staff, government officials and traditional healers, has been meeting every Wednesday. Minutes from the first meeting show that every member of the team had to sign a confidentiality form.
“Traditional medicine has not been integrated yet as we are at the beginning stages and this would just be a pilot,” said the Dream Centre’s Dr Portia Mkhize. “You should ask the Department of Health about this because this comes from their side.”
De Witt said that while management was “open to hearing from all role players”, he admitted that there were “a lot of grey areas” regarding traditional medicine. “There is no record-keeping or statistics about traditional medicine. Traditional medicine seems to have been handed down from ancestors, not tested and tried.”
He said the task team was expected to present a plan to Dream Centre management by the end of the month, after which the medical staff would help decide whether the centre should become a pilot site for traditional medicine.
The government apparently offered to increase its subsidy to the centre, should management agree to allow traditional medicine to be used on its premises, but De Witt said that the Department of Health hadn’t “made any hard and fast decision” about this.
Nkonyeni’s initiative came after she hosted a small invitation-only meeting with traditional healers, including Maseko and Gwala, in May. Former minister of health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang addressed the meeting that excluded local traditional healers.
In a brief reply that failed to address a number of queries, Department of Health spokesman Leon Mbangwa admitted that “a multi-stakeholder task team had been established to explore the possibility of introducing traditional medicine at the Dream Centre”.
“The work of the task team will remain exploratory, strategic and pilot oriented rather than operational,” he said, stressing that participants were bound by a confidentiality agreement.
Gqaleni declined to comment, saying simply that the task team was trying to implement government policy on traditional medicine. — health-e news
Nkonyeni’s Medicine
Since her appointment as KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC in 2004, Peggy Nkonyeni has followed in the footsteps of her mentor, former minister of health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, by claiming that antiretroviral medication is toxic.
- March 2006: Nkonyeni and Tshabalala-Msimang recommend to Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s mother, who runs a hospice, that she should give her patients the traditional concoction uBhejane, made by Zeblon Gwala.
- May 2006: At a funeral, Nkonyeni attacks the Treatment Action Campaign and raises the possibility that the HI virus could have been developed as a weapon of ‘biological warfare’.
- January 2008: Nkonyeni supports disciplinary action being taken against Dr Colin Pfaff of Manguzi Hospital in the Umkhanyakude district, KwaZulu-Natal, for using donor funds to provide ‘dual therapy’ to pregnant women and their babies ahead of an official government roll-out. February: Nkonyeni says she is unhappy about microbicide trials being conducted in KwaZulu-Natal, saying that “our people should not be regarded as guinea pigs".
- February 2008: Nkonyeni tells a meeting at Manguzi Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal: ‘We have a problem with doctors that work in rural areas. They do not care about people. It is all about profit.’ She describes AZT as ‘toxic’. After hearing these comments, Manguzi doctor Mark Blaylock throws the MEC’s picture into a dustbin.
- February 2008: In a meeting with the TAC to discuss disciplinary action against Blaylock, Nkonyeni displays a booklet on her desk called ‘End Aids: Break the chains of pharmaceutical colonialism’. Printed by the Dr Rath Foundation and the SA National Civic Organisation, it compares the TAC to the Nazis, says all ARVs are toxic and claims Vitamin C ‘can block the multiplication of HIV by more than 99%.
- March 2008 : Nkonyeni accuses Pfaff and his colleagues of ‘anarchy’ for introducing dual therapy at Manguzi before the official launch.
- April 2008 : She uses her budget speech to attack Blaylock.
- May 5: Nkonyeni’s task team into Blaylock and Pfaff starts its work at Manguzi
- May 2008 : The AIDS Law Project complains to the SA Human Rights Commission about Nkonyeni ‘harassing doctors and violating their rights and those of their community’.
- May 2008: Nkonyeni asks Treasury to audit Manguzi operations relating to the private donation arranged by Pfaff to cover ‘dual therapy’.
- May 2008: Nkonyeni hosts an information workshop on HIV treatment at a Durban hotel, attended by about 30 people, where speakers condemn antiretroviral drugs.
- July 2008: Nkonyeni approaches the management of the Dream Centre Hospice in Pinetown and asks them to consider integrating traditional medicine into their treatment regimen for people with AIDS.
- 15 August 2008: Nkonyeni visits the Dream Centre to introduce Traditional Healers Organisation president Nhlavana Maseko and set up a task team to investigate introducing traditional medicine at the hospice.
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